Technical difficulties and emerging development directions of deep rock burst prevention in China

With the continuous increase of coal mining depth, the occurrence and prevention of deep rockburst in China have become normalized. In order to improve the effectiveness of deep rockburst prevention and control technology, starting from the technical difficulties of deep rockburst prevention and control in on-site engineering, combined with practical data statistics of disaster prevention and control engineering, this study demonstrates that the deep rockburst in China is due to its high geological stress and large range of human mining disturbance. The stress recovery of surrounding rock is fast after rock stress unloading during the disaster prevention and control process. The low effectiveness of rockburst prevention and control can be attributed to the new requirements of “three highs and one low” prevention and control technology in deep mining compared to that in shallow mining, including high-strength large-sized drilling to relieve pressure, in order to solve the collapse prone problem of thick and hard coal seams; small spacing high-density drilling to solve the problem of disconnected pressure relief range in drilling; multiple rounds of repeated high-frequency construction to solve the problem of rapid stress recovery after unloading pressure in deep coal seams; and the mining face is advancing at a low speed to solve the problem of high mining disturbance intensity. In response to the new requirements of “three highs and one low” prevention and control mode for deep rockburst, in order to further improve the safety and reliability of rockburst prevention and control, and based on the limitations of optimizing development and mining deployment for conventional source rockburst prevention and control, this paper proposes the technology of actively regulating the structure and load of overlying rock layers in the deep rockburst prevention and control areas, and presents some further scientific problems that need to be solved. Against the background of several typical rockburst accidents in recent years with the problem of “missed targets” in the prevention and control plans, a local targeted prevention and control technology for deep rockburst mining space has been developed, and the scientific challenges that need to be solved in the future have been pointed out. Against the background of the difficulty in evaluating safety issues after the implementation of coal mine rockburst prevention and control measures, a deep rockburst prevention and control unloading standard evaluation technology is proposed, and the scientific difficulties that need to be solved in the future are pointed out. The coal industry vigorously promotes intelligent mining, but the disaster control still relies on manual labor and personnel to operate in a high-risk environment. This paper also explores the emerging research direction and scientific challenges of intelligent mining and intelligent prevention and control of deep rockburst. Finally, it is objectively pointed out that the prevention and control of rockburst is not purely a theoretical and technical issue, and the human understanding of technical issues is also one of the important reasons for rockburst accidents. Combining with the on-site engineering practice, this paper discusses the concept and mechanism of rockburst, whether rockburst can be predicted, whether rockburst can be prevented and controlled, and how to deal with rockburst mines and other industry focused technical issues. It is pointed out that the problem of rockburst engineering is a struggle between humans and nature, which requires practitioners to objectively understand, objectively accept, and conduct in-depth research. The current achievement is of significance.